Category Archives: innovation

A perspective on Universal Tax Debt Relief

COVID-19 Government Aid

Canadian governments at all levels responded to COVID-19 by telling people to stay home and shuttering large parts of the economy resulting in massive job losses along with creating massive liabilities for business owners and threatening the survival of businesses ranging from theatres, to restaurants and airlines.

Federal COVID-19 relief as of April 24, 2020 was $145.6 billion according to news media. In the first month COVID-19 emergency funding was already 3.5 times of Canadians’ old tax debt and it has continued to rise rapidly. As of May 26, 2020 news media reported that the $2,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit had paid $40 billion dollars to 8 million Canadians. 8 million people represents a staggering 42% of Canada’s workforce, including sole proprietors, and self-employed Canadians.

The Government of Canada also immediately extended tax filing and payment deadlines from April 30 to September 1, 2020, ostensibly to reduce Canadians’ stress and anxiety of being unable to pay their outstanding 2019 taxes due to COVID-19 decimating their financial capacity to pay their regular bills for shelter, food and communications, let alone any outstanding taxes.

Canadians’ Tax Debts

In 2018, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) reported that uncollected taxes had risen to $44 billion and “…unpaid tax owed is set to hit more than $47 billion by 2020. The steady increase in the tax debt — up by about $2 billion annually [since 2015] — comes despite a major investment in the 2016 federal budget to wrestle down fast-rising levels of uncollected tax debt.”

Importantly, “close to half of the unpaid tax debt is owed by individual Canadians. Corporations and businesses account for the remainder, which includes unpaid GST and payroll deductions not turned over to Ottawa.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tax-debt-liberal-budget-collections-1.4715967

To be clear, tax debt includes neither tax revenue lost to the underground economy (the black market) nor tax evasion, for instance through offshore tax havens. Tax debt means tax owed by Canadians who actually have filed their individual and business tax returns, i.e. people who rather than cheating are dealing with capacity to pay issues.

Universal Tax Debt Relief

Universal Tax Debt Relief is an efficient way to give affected Canadians a chance at recovery and rebuilding their lives, or at least some peace-of-mind. Meaningful tax debt amnesty has to extend to 2019 and perhaps include COVID-19 Year 1, ie the current year.

It would give affected Canadians a chance to wind down their businesses responsibly, perhaps even avoid personal and business bankruptcies, and stop having the millstone of CRA debt around their necks, potentially until the end of their lives. An utterly hopeless situation.

Eliminating their CRA debt would give affected Canadians a chance to begin the long but hopeful process of rebuilding their lives, their credit and start with a fresh slate in terms of their relationship with CRA. They could work to avoid poverty becoming a burden to Canada’s social safety system.

Unprecendented? Not really.

CRA has not collected from tax evaders despite having access to the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, for instance.

CRA has hired more tax collectors since 2015 to deal with the tax debt backlog, and they have assigned a few staff to tax evasion as well. But CRA simply does not have sufficient enforcement capacity and uncollected tax debt keeps growing – and no one seems to track what the other group, tax evaders, are doing overseas to avoid or evade taxes in Canada..

In 2012, the federal government simply wiped out about 280,000 skilled immigrant applications because they were backlogged and doing so gave the government a clean slate rather than have a years-old millstone around its ability to act in the present time.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-s-skilled-immigrants-backlog-to-be-eliminated-soon-1.1290847

But what about fairness?

COVID-19 isn’t fair. Falling into debt because of following ones passion
isn’t fair. Missing a single tax payment and learning the hard way how big a stick the government carries isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair.

My proposals isn’t suggesting anyone should not be paying their taxes – I pay mine and I expect all tax payers to pay theirs. This is simply a
recognition that there are groups of people who have ended up in dire financial situations, while they have been building businesses, communities and making all manner of contributions. With COVID-19 all bets are off. The fall out will include business and individual failures. This is a chance to give back hope for a better day.

COVID-19 relief has been fast and effective at saving the lives of millions of Canadians. It is time to save the lives of those Canadians who have been living under the unyielding choke-hold of tax debt and CRA tax collections.

Some added notes

Tax Debt and CRA’s punitive penalty and compound interest regime

CRA uses a punitive daily compound interest regime coupled with severe penalties for late filing or not being able to pay all taxes by the due date. This is applied in the harshest ways related to payroll taxes. GST debt and income tax is treated with somewhat less punishment in comparison. The penalties and compound interest exceed the average profit margin of many businesses by a wide margin, making catching up exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.

“The penalty for late filing payroll remittances is:

3% if the amount is one to three days late
5% if it is four or five days late
7% if it is six or seven days late
10% if it is more than seven days late, or if no amount is remitted
20% if this is the second or subsequent time you are assessed this penalty in a calendar year, if the failures were made knowingly or under circumstances of gross negligence”

Amongst other penalties there is a “penalty for failure to file information returns over the Internet.” And for some tax remitting organizations, “payments made on the due date but not at a financial institution can be charged a penalty of 3% of the amount due.”

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/payroll/penalties-interest-other-consequences/payroll-penalties-interest.html

Importantly, any monies owned to CRA including penalties and interest CANNOT be used as a tax write off. Normally, interest on a loan is a tax write off, but interest on CRA debt has to be paid out of after-tax income, making paying old debts dauntingly difficult.

Getting a loan to pay off CRA debt?

Banks will not make loans to people carrying CRA debt. Loan sharks on the other hand charge more than 30% on loans they give – again, most businesses do not achieve such high profit margins. This spiral of despair is a set up for failure.

Does bankruptcy wipe out CRA debt?

Important to understand is that debt to CRA is unlike any other debt – even in bankruptcy CRA debt is not automatically wiped out and can persist to the end of a person’s life. In effect CRA can keep a bankrupt person from ever emerging from bankruptcy. CRA can and does claw back Canada Pension Plan payments, which average around $650 a month, leaving seniors with tax debt in a despairing situation.

Restaurants at the Brink – COVID-19 Response

A sector analysis series #1

Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA (i.e. use in any way you want with attribution of source: “Inga Petri, Strategic Moves, May 17, 2020”)

Public health officials in Canada ordered dine-in restaurants closed everywhere during March 2020. Now in mid-May, they are musing about reopening restaurants with new obligations, centred on 2 metre distancing, disinfecting surfaces and perhaps more.

That potential “permission” to “open” cannot result in thinking restaurants and their owners wouldn’t require continued financial support.

The reality check

2018 financial data from Statistics Canada available at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/pp-pp.nsf/eng/home shows that for the 35,514 full-service restaurants with sales between $30,000 to $5 million (data for those earning above $5 million is suppressed):

35% did not generate any profit at all, i.e. they were operating at a loss.
The other 65% turned a profit of 7.6% on average, representing $24,400 for the year.

That means a profitable restaurant in Canada makes money only 4 weeks out of 52 on average. It also means a restaurant owner’s average annual profit is less than minimum wage. And no, many sole proprietors do not pay themselves a regular wage; instead keeping everything working in their business. Anyone can see the high risk restaurateurs take and how tenuous their existence is.

In the Yukon, where I live, the numbers are a little better: only 22% do not report any profit and of the 78% that do, the average profit is 9.3% representing $66,000 on average in 2018. Nonetheless these figures show how little slack there is and how all the money for the years comes from the now cancelled summer tourist season.

This data makes clear: the average restaurant, closed down already for two months due to the public health orders, is already bankrupt. Re-opening obligations are shaping up to be costly and won’t result in lower staffing complements despite serving far fewer customers due to new labour intensive cleaning regimes. There is simply no economic case to reopen for the great majority of dine-in restaurants.

Significant direct contributions to Canadians

Through the risk borne by them, restaurateurs have been contributing far-reaching benefits to Canada’s economy: according to Government of Canada data, the average dine-in restaurant had $765,600 in sales. Of that $250,300 went to labour costs and wages. Purchases and materials that are part of the cost of goods sold totalled $273,900. Rent accounted for $65,300 and so on.

And there are many more indirect, restaurant owners have been building communities, contributed to quality of life, played a large part in attracting and retaining a skilled workforce, growing tourism through the culinary arts and memorable dining experiences, supporting charities, paying staff, helping put young people through school, feeding people, all while breaking their backs and bank accounts.

In short, the direct and related economic activity generated by the restaurant sector is worth billions to Canadians and the Canadian economy.

A broken model – Restaurateurs need help

COVID-19 is showing for the world to see what has been true for some time: The business model independent full-service restaurants have been forced into, largely by price competition from other food sector players, is broken and the owners are broke.

The numbers also make clear why restaurants can fall into GST and Payroll remittance tax debt, when basic break-even is so difficult to achieve. Non-remittance incurs extraordinary penalties and interest charges that can take up any monthly surplus and more. And then they are exposed to the CRA’s relentless collections and being treated as less than valuable community builders and hard-working, creative, innovative business leaders.

They need a chance at a life beyond COVID-19 and beyond a broken business model.

How can Canada help restaurants and their owners now?

A few ideas that could pull restaurants and restaurateurs back from the brink:

Consumers have to learn to pay much more for the pleasures of eating out, especially when they don’t wish to tip 20% for servers and rather see living wages for restaurant workers, rather than below minimum wage as is the case in some jurisdictions. In the Yukon where I live it appears as though most, if not all, workers in the restaurant industry earn well above minimum wage plus tips.
Landlords should permanently slash rents to restaurant tenants to enable restaurant owners earning a living wage and being able to invest in innovations in their business or business model.
In addition to short-term COVID-19 Transition Grants to pay for additional public health mandated expenses and staff training, Government has to consider providing meaningful tax debt relief to allow a fresh start or at least some peace for owners.
Sole proprietors must be considered as a special group requiring assistance. If sole proprietors are considered as “making a profit” when they barely break even before paying themselves anything, their work translates into not being able to cover their personal expenses and falling into debt.
Local governments should revisit their zoning requirements to enable new, innovative ways of providing food services to the public. They can range from quickly enabling sidewalk patios and taking over unused parking spaces (no tourists means ample parking spaces are unused); a new breed of home-based businesses offering nano-scale/single-table/prepared-food eating experiences without the massively expensive requirements for home-based commercial kitchens; significantly reducing restaurant and liquor licensing costs.
Canada’s provincial and territorial government-owned and run Liquor Control Boards should look at offering higher discounts or find a way to return most of their profits to their customers, i.e. bars and restaurants that must purchase alcohol at government controlled prices; allowing off-sales within every restaurant liquor license during the COVID shutdown period and 3 months beyond.

COVID-19 relief has been fast and effective at saving the financial lives of millions of Canadians. It is time to save the lives of those Canadians who have been living under the unyielding pressures of low price competition while the market demands quality food and high quality, unique dining experiences.

DigitalArtsNation.ca launched!

Today, we’ve launched digitalartsnation.ca, the website for Making Tomorrow Better: Taking Digital Action in the Performing Arts. This initiative received significant funding from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund in spring of 2019. The nation-wide partnership led by the Atlantic Presenters Association includes the Manitoba Arts Network, BC Touring Council, Island Mountain Arts/Northern Exposure, Yukon Arts Centre / N3 and the Yellowknife Arts & Cultural Centre.

Of note: most of the participants in the face-to-face workshops live on the edges of the country. therefore we tailor content to suit the realities, including slower internet connectivity, of rural and remote communities across Canada. Because what works there, will work in urban centres, too.

This national initiative brings practical digital know-how to participants across Canada, through custom workshops, online how-to tutorials and information-sharing.

These workshops are designed to help participants speak digital with confidence – that is, we will demystify and discuss the digital realm in plain English – and quickly become competent participants in arts sector conversations about leading digital tools, emerging digital innovations, and new digital business models.

Workshops are led by Inga Petri, Strategic Moves, or Tammy Lee, Culture Creates.

Watch our upcoming workshops page and see where we are headed next!

How intelligent is AI today?

I recently attended a workshop by Arts Impact AI, which is undertaking conversations on AI across Canada. I discovered quickly that my expectation of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is, wasn’t quite in the right place for the conversation at hand. I expected the discussion to centre around intelligent machines thinking and working similar to humans. Where attributes like self-learning or the ability to intelligently change its programming based on new input would be explored.

Algorithm Making

We spent the morning considering algorithms capable of rapidly analyzing vast amounts of data. An intuitive example came in the form of a group exercise where group 1 developed an algorithm (five characteristics based on a set of 12 images of convicted criminals) to identify the most likely criminal in a crowd, group 2 – the computer – applied the algorithm and group 3 – the humans – were tasked to simply identify the criminal without an algorithm. My colleagues in group 1 – which was made up of people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities who live on the traditional territories of self-governing First Nations in the Yukon (and yes, that might have mattered to our decision-making) – opted to select criteria that did not include racial stereotypes. Needless to say, we broke the machine.

Each group had serious struggles with the ethical implications of their group’s role. This was the point, of course: do the designers of algorithms simply reinforce the stereotypes based on a highly biased judicial system that disproportionately affects Indigenous people and people of colour, and often men that are visibly part of these groups; or do they write an algorithm that does not fall into those stereotypes but focuses on other aspects.

Big Data Analysis

In my way of thinking this kind of AI application lives in the realm of big data analysis. While I imagined AI to feel unfamiliar and new, this felt extremely familiar to me: As a market researcher, I have followed for years work on “big data” analysis and how with the aid of faster computers our ability to analyze truly vast data sets has increased many fold. The biggest advantage, indeed, being speed that cannot be matched by a single human brain.

The AI application this group exercise mirrored is based on the analysis of a vast amount of data, e.g. 10,000+ photographs of convicted criminals, using computer facial recognition. This analysis identifies statistical probabilities for the parameters that were set. Those probabilities are then used by humans to program an algorithm. That algorithm seeks to identify people in large crowds that match the analysis. By definition, this kind of analysis is looking to the past to inform the future; or in this case, to become the future.

Ethical Dilemma

The humans who build such algorithms – which itself is void of AI self-learning or the acquisition and application of new information and capacity – determine their outcome.

When these humans do not apply a greater understanding, or an ethical lens (related to systemic impacts of oppression of certain groups in society, for instance) to the parameters analyzed in the first place, or to the resulting statistical probabilities, they are bound to create algorithms that reinforce the systemic biases evident in society.

In short, they may miss a lot of criminals and identify a lot of non-criminals. In so doing, they may also ensure that more of the same groups of people are pursued with the government’s righteous rigour, resulting in higher incarceration rates for these groups. Rather than discover what is real, it perpetuates a seriously biased reality that increasingly would disadvantage specific groups. The past literally becomes the future.

AI governance as data governance

This discussion of what algorithms are today centred on big data and what we can and should do with it was fascinating. Alas, it didn’t paint a picture for me of artificial intelligence in the sci-fi sense.

In any case, as a result of this data focus, the AI governance discussion was heavy on data governance, i.e. the collection, storage and use of personal data. Personal Information Privacy and Electronic Documents Act and provincial laws govern information that is identifiable to an individual already. Canadian Anti Spam Legislation tries to combat spam and other electronic threats. There is a Do Not Call List to regulate how landlines can be used. These legislative tools tend to deal with a specific technology. This approach leaves much grey and blank space as companies explore and create more advanced technological innovations. Simply put, technology changes more rapidly than laws.

In the end I feel it is this conundrum that AI governance should address – to move away from regulating one specific technology at a time to contemplate the notion of privacy and social licence we wish to adopt in our society.

Definitions of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans.

Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include:

– Speech recognition
– Learning
– Planning
– Problem solving

[Source: Technopedia]

4 Types of AI

Reactive machines – e.g. Deep Blue chess playing machine
- Reactive machines have no concept of the world and therefore cannot function beyond the simple tasks for which they are programmed.
Limited memory – e.g. autonomous vehicles
- Limited memory builds on observational data in conjunction with pre-programmed data the machines already contain
Theory of mind – e.g. current voice assistants are an incomplete early version
- decision-making ability equal to the extent of a human mind, but by machines
Self-awareness -so far only exists in the movies
- Self-aware AI involves machines that have human-level consciousness.

Source: G2

Cross-posted on https://digitalartsnation.ca

Art is fuel: Community engagement in the CRD

The Capital Regional District (CRD) Arts Service is poised to begin a broad-based community engagement and consultation process to identify key implementation strategies designed to achieve the goals of the CRD 2015-18 Strategic Arts Plan.

I am thrilled that the CRD Arts Service has hired Strategic Moves and my project team to undertake this work. I am excited to get to know the communities and people of southern Vancouver Island better.

With the contract signed last week, we are putting everything in place for a round of pre-consultation sessions. On June 23 and 24, we will undertake a series of four sessions with as wide a range of people active in the local arts community and those interested in developing the arts in the CRD as are available. I know it is going to be short notice for some, but it is better than a July or August date when vacation season creates only more challenges. We will use this pre-consultation to introduce the project, our team and to gather initial feedback and input on the community engagement and consultation process itself. In my view, our job is to listen closely to the community as we build together a strong, meaningful and relevant implementation plan.

These pre-consultation sessions represent the beginning of a 6 months long process where those interested in the arts in the CRD will have several opportunities to make their voices heard and their ideas count about their priorities for key implementation activities the CRD should consider adopting over the next 3 years. We’ll reach out and invite the full diversity of artists and arts organization and communities throughout this process.

These last few days my working hours have been consumed with briefings, document reviews, planning more briefings with the Arts Committee of the Arts Service and the newly formed project Steering Committee, and planning these pre-consultation sessions.

As with all large projects with many different stakeholders, I expect deep conversations, vigorous discussions and healthy debate. It is the best way we have to ensure that the results of this process are solid and meaningful to the local arts community and the CRD communities at large.

In a word, as art is fuel, I am stoked.

Inspiration reverberates

Check out Emma Jarrett’s latest blog post on Sustainable Connection inspired by the Northern Exposure conference last month in Wells, BC.

I enjoyed working with her and we had some great conversations about authentic presenting. Her performance coaching practice applies to anyone who gets to work with a microphone, not only musicians.

Taking steps to understand digital potential in the performing arts

At the CAPACOA conference in Halifax this past January, attendee feedback suggested that I made a compelling case for Breaking the Fifth Wall: Digitizing the Performing Arts. Indeed, attendees were buzzing with the challenges and opportunities presented. Others who have watched the presentation online have asked me how they can get involved. You can watch my talk here on video. In it, I weave together a case for sector-leadership and sector-ownership in developing a future digital platform. I am most excited about digitization beyond the 2-D screens we have today. In particular, I believe a future-oriented perspective requires us to contemplate live-streaming/streaming 3-D renderings; holographic and or virtual reality convergence in technologies. Things most of us have never seen but enabling technology solutions are advancing rapidly.

In this talk I offered a brief context of digital transformation in the last 20 years, an overview of experiments in digital performing arts presentation from around the world, a perspective on what it take to transform the challenging economic model that persists in live performing arts for the presenting field in particular, and a call to action.

At the upcoming CAPACOA national conference in Ottawa from November 25 to 28 I hope to turn that buzz into tangible action: Together with CAPACOA, we invite you talk about the next steps we as a sector want to take to drive this discussion forward and explore opportunities of digital distribution at scale in Canada and beyond. Can we establish a working group to spearhead conversations and build sector leadership on this central issue? Who wants to be and needs to get involved?

I am looking forward to facilitating this conversation on November 26 at 8 am.